Migration from Delayed Job to Active Job

Rails 4.2 has a built-in support for executing jobs/tasks in the background using Active Job. This framework helps to setup jobs to be executed by workers at a later time by queuing in back-end. Active Jobs manages jobs in front-end and it allows queuing in back-end using Delayed Job (DJ) or Sidekiq or Resque. We'll be using Active Jobs with DJ queuing in back-end, since we already use DJ. Moreover, Rails 5 is expected to support inbuilt queuing.(https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/19425).

Present gems stack:

• Rails 4.2.x
• Delayed_job 4.1.x
• daemons 1.0.10
• delayed_job_active_record 4.1.x

1. Initialize Active Job to use Delayed Job as back-end in Rails application configuration (application.rb or development.rb/production.rb).

config.active_job.queue_adapter = :delayed_job

2. Taking an existing Learnexa worker class 'DisableUserSubscription' as example:

   class DisableUserSubscription
  
     attr_accessor :company_id
     
     def initialize(company_id)
       self.company_id = company_id
     end
     
     def perform
       UserSubscription.disable_user_subscription(self.company_id)
     end
  
  end

3. Correcting the above class in Active Jobs style. A new class will be generated using:

rails g job DisableUserSubscription

Above command will create a new class which is descendant of ActiveJob::Base with name ending with Job.

4. Change #perform method as:

class DisableUserSubscriptionJob < ActiveJob::Base
  queue_as :default
  
  def perform(company_id)
    UserSubscription.disable_user_subscription(company_id)
  end
end

5. Replacing Delayed Job queuing code:

Delayed::Job.enqueue DisableUserSubscription.new(@company.id)     

as

DisableUserSubscriptionJob.perform_later(@company.id)

Active Job also contains a useful module ActiveJob::TestHelper, which provides several useful methods to verify that the jobs are working properly. Some significant ones are:

1. assert_enqueued_jobs(number) - checks that exact number of jobs were added to queue

assert_enqueued_jobs 1 do
  post :create
end

2. assert_enqueued_with(args) - checks that block enqueues job with given arguments

assert_enqueued_with(job: DisableUserSubscriptionJob,
                   args: [company],
                   queue: 'default') do
  post :create
end

3. perform_enqueued_jobs - performs jobs created in the past block instead of queuing them

perform_enqueued_jobs do
  post :create
end

Adding Active Jobs and deleting Delayed jobs shouldn't be done in same deployment. Because, the previously used worker might get delayed but not be processed fully before deployment. And after deployment this job fails because Delayed Job couldn't create instance of already deleted class.

A few significant benefits are:

• Queues - Changing a queue or time for running a job by #set method on job.
• Callbacks - Allows to trigger logic during the life cycle of a job.
• Action Mailer - An integrated Mailer to easily send emails asynchronously.
• GlobalID - Allows to pass live Active Record objects to your job instead of id pairs.

Reference:

• http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_job_basics.html